It’s the Sheldon Silver anti-sleaze law.
State legislators would be required to report outside income of more than $1,000 and disclose the name of law clients who pay them more than $5,000 under an ethics-reform package unveiled Wednesday by Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.
But government watchdogs immediately warned the changes didn’t go far enough and were merely “partial solutions” to combat pervasive corruption.
The reform package comes a month after former Assembly Speaker Silver was indicted on fraud and extortion charges for allegedly pocketing nearly $4 million in improper payments from two law firms.
Cuomo alluded to the Silver scandal — calling it “a recent high-profile ethics case” — during an Albany press conference announcing the new measures.
“I reorganized the priorities and I said, the No. 1 issue for the budget is ethics reform [following Silver’s arrest],” Cuomo said.
One provision in the ethics regulations would treat lawmakers like factory workers — they’d have to prove they were in Albany to get their per diem expenses by swiping in with an electronic card.
Queens Assemblyman William Scarborough was indicted last year for allegedly collecting $40,000 in bogus travel reimbursements.
Senate GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos blasted the ethics agreement as going soft on the Cuomo administration.
“I was shocked to not see a lot of the recommendations for the executive branch in the agreement,” Skelos said.
He noted, for example, that there isn’t a requirement for domestic partners to report income — thus excluding Cuomo’s partner, millionaire celebrity chef Sandra Lee.
Leaders of three government watchdog groups — Citizens Union, NYPIRG and Reinvent Albany — panned the plan as insufficient.
“Partial solutions are no longer sufficient to fully address the growing problem of Albany corruption,” said Dick Dadey of Citizens Union.
“We feel very strongly that outside income for state legislators should be banned,” said John Kaehny of Reinvent Albany.